I read the first post before posting and i do my test on dummy about 5 min for each test, with 100% up hwt.... so... i think that 1200 is too much haste... or im wrong?

I'd say Holy priest would probably work better in combination with the mentioned healers. Simply because Paladins and Shamans are better tankhealers than raidhealers at the moment. Filling the last spot with a raidhealer, ie Holy priest is best, imo.

Altho, as I haven't raided beta I'm not sure if discs "raidhealing" will be enough to cover up the lack of just that from Paladins, Shamans.

Does it need to have the ! in the macro for it to work?

I have never seen someone use a tabard conditional macro before. Very interesting.

I guess the question becomes, you can still macro it, SHOULD you still macro it?

Well, it depens on the fight: if you are rage starved, then no. If you have a high enough crit rate and much damage incoming (from multiple attackers) you will have enough rage. Think of it as a rageburner. In CT at 85, when you start farming your raid gear you would prefer not to macro it, since your values are still very low.

Rune of the Fallen Crusader and Pillar of Frost is part of a Best Case Scenario, the way I see it:

Best Case Scenario:
Brittle Bones: +4% str
MotW/BoK: +5% str
Rune of the Fallen Crusader: +15% str (random proc)
Pillar of Frost: +20% str (up 1/3 of the time if used on CD)

15 * (1,04 * 1,05 * 1,15 * 1,2) = 22,6044 str
which translates into 22,6044*2 = 45,21 AP

Using +15 str enchant over the 44 AP on gloves will give you a 1,2 AP gain in a best case scenario. The question is whether or not a reliable 44 AP is more attractive than 1,2 more AP when all your procs and CD are live. I would go for sustained dps over burst

But 1 STR =/= 2 AP.

First Post for EP Values:
2h DW
Strength 3.11 2.94

15x 2.94 = 44.1

Somewhat off topic a bit, but has there been any simulations of arms versus fury dps at entry level gear at 85? I imagine that similar to how it played out in early Ulduar, that with less ratings available, arms will be superior to fury early on, but it will be outscaled by fury later on. I am really worried about rage generation at 85 in a raid, when I am sure I will have a very low amout of hit/haste, but arms has a much smaller need of hit/haste, and they suffer less from dodges than fury.

So relentless earthsiege diamond on PTR looks to be going live with "requires more blue gems than red gems". Is the 3% increased critical strike damage good enough at 80 to make us re-gem? Or is it the case that even at 80 strength is just too good to loose to meet the meta?

I'd like to know what macros people use that help them with shot rotation.


I myself use:

/castsequence reset=5/target/alt Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/cast Tear Armor
/cast Black Arrow
/use 10

...this works very well with a steady shot cast time of about 1.4-1.45 secs...
Also, Tear Armor us there because a raptor is currently my pet of choice, and it tends to not reapply Tear Armor once it's gotten to 3 stacks, letting it fall off. And the "/use 10" is because I'm an engineer and that toggles the hyperspeed accelerators on my gloves.

Of course if L&L triggers you'll want to break rotation, but try to weave the shots in between the steady shots, and beware of using arcane shot unless you have 70+ focus because you might run out.

Has anyone determined the point at which armor vs. block meta becomes better or worse? I'm guessing low block rating would obviously push towards the armor meta (possibly during leveling since stats will fluxuate) for overall less hits but is there an avoidance range that has been found that block trumps the armor (pending both functioning properly of coarse)?

My bad, didn't realize that pet crits actually give you mana. Thanks.